Mainshock Earthquakes
“Packed with exciting breakthroughs, new patterns, and symmetries which have led to quantitative mainshock models and practicable early earthquake forecasts worldwide.”
A New Ecological Approach
to Earthquake Forecasting
This website is devoted to providing early warning of some major quakes, principally ‘mainshocks’.
The earthquake forecasts are based on the author’s twenty years of ecological research and modelling of earthquake population dynamics, symmetries, and patterns; research which was inspired by the tragic tsunami following a magnitude 9.1 mega-earthquake on December 26, 2004, at Banda Aceh, in Northern Sumatra.
BANDA ACEH, SUMATRA - DECEMBER 26, 2004
(c) Shutterstock Appalled by the huge loss of life and the absolute devastation, and as an ecologist (not a seismologist) decided then and there to devote the rest of my retirement years to a new ecological approach to modelling these tragic seismic events with a view to forecasting them and being able to provide early warning. This research is separate from but complementary to existing seismological approaches to understanding these seismic events which, as yet, cannot be forecast based on any published scientific information.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) sets the requirements for an accurate forecast: “An earthquake prediction must define 3 elements: 1) the date and time, 2) the location, and 3) the magnitude” [bold emphasis supplied]. Based on this definition, and as recently as July 22, 2025, its official website said that “Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake” Can you predict earthquakes? | U.S. Geological Survey.
What does this new quantitative ecological approach achieve?
Although not with the accuracy required by the above definition, this unpublished new ecological perspective enables practicable forecasting of large earthquakes often weeks ahead, and mostly with accuracies of plus or minus one day, and for all mainshocks mostly to plus or minus 0.2 magnitude (including the magnitude of the recent M 8.8 2025 Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia Earthquake, on July 29).
Mainshocks affect quite large areas and the ecological approach can identify the most likely region down to what seems for preparedness a practicable radius of about 250 km but, of course, cannot give the coordinates for the epicentre of any anticipated large earthquake.
This study of earthquake dynamics has only been made possible by many decades of work by thousands of seismologists, geologists, and other scientists who have provided fundamental data freely on the internet through various national websites like that of the USGS* (United States Geological Survey): Search Earthquake Catalog.
The quantitative ecological approach also strongly depends on Newton’s well-known third law of motion that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Magnitude, timing, and general location – the three variables that I have found to be of most importance in modelling and understanding the population dynamics of large earthquakes – may now be increasingly accurately and reliably forecast from mathematical, statistical, and graphical modelling describing the population dynamics, interactions, and symmetries between earthquakes in each region of interest.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
EARTHQUAKE MAPS
GA - Geoscience Australia
All times on this site are ‘UTC’ (Coordinated Universal Time)
The above comments are based on the author’s own work of the past twenty years during which he has studied well over one hundred of the world’s major seismic events to produce this entirely new approach for understanding and forecasting major earthquakes.
Most of the above seismic events were modelled retrospectively, whereas this website is now devoted to an experimental phase of testing all models in a prospective setting and to sharing the important forecasts derived from those models so that thousands might benefit, and many lives might be saved.
This new ecological theory embodies five breakthroughs of profound importance:
Establishing during the first days of this study (January 2005) the importance of tidal influences on earthquake dynamics and the timing of seismic events, driven by the full moon and new moon tides which were obviously affecting the entire earth.
Discovering mathematically critical magnitude precursors which allow computation of the size of forthcoming mainshocks to within 0.2 magnitude in over 95% of cases.
Elucidating the ‘flow of time’ between seismic events in the spatio-temporal patterns of earthquakes and, from its geometry and symmetries, reliably estimating the timing of mainshocks to within two days, at least two weeks ahead.
Finding the importance of regional symmetries between certain past and present seismic events.
Revealing the indicative values of regional changes in the relative abundance of different magnitudes.
Triangulation techniques and comparisons between yearly, monthly, and daily timing models and patterns, and the use of overlapping study regions, help to minimise the chances of false positive and false negative forecasts. The seismicity patterns and major seismic events that matter are regional, not restricted to any fault line and - depending on the size of the mainshocks - may involve study regions with radii ranging from 250 to 1500 kilometres.
Further research details may not be revealed here until such time as they are published.
*If not stated otherwise, all earthquake data for the research and forecasts shown in this website were derived from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and all times and dates are UTC.